Capcom Should Rerelease Resident Evil Gaiden

Long lost Game Boy Color adventure would find a home on the 3DS eShop, just in time for Revelations.

Hard to believe that in approximately two weeks, we'll finally have Capcom's long-awaited survival horror adventure, Resident Evil: Revelations. We first saw the game at the 2010 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), back when it was just a cut scene with Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine pulling guns on each other while a strange man sat strapped to a chair. We couldn't even play it.

Fast forward to today, and we've had two demos (the most recent debuted last Thursday) and several videos to experience, as well as five known reviews, all of which scored the game nine or 90 and above.

Suffice to say, we can't wait to get our hands on it.

Looking back at the series' history, we have two Resident Evil games that appeared on portable Nintendo systems. You're probably familiar with Resident Evil: Deadly Silence for DS, the remake of the 1996 PlayStation classic, released in 2006.

Go back a bit further, and you'll stumble across Resident Evil Gaiden. Believe it or not, Capcom delivered a brand new entry in the franchise for Game Boy Color that quite frankly deserves a second chance via the 3DS eShop.

Why? More like, why not? Like Revelations, the game takes place on a cruise ship.

In this case, Resident Evil 2/Resident Evil 4 star Leon Kennedy sets off to explore the mysterious ocean liner, Starlight, rumored to carry Umbrella's new bio-organic weapon, or BOW. Once his superiors lose contact with Leon, they send Barry Burton (from the first Resident Evil) to track him down.

Now unlike Resident Evil games past, Gaiden features a top down perspective that eliminates most if not all of the potential scares. What's more, combat involves a timing mini game where you must stop a rapidly moving line within a highlighted area to fire and subsequently kill the zombies populating the ship.

Reviews at the time were not kind, with the highest score coming from Game Informer (7.5/10). Most websites slammed the game, but on the flip side, it has developed somewhat of a cult following. Head to GameFaqs, and you'll find a wider range of scores, along with a lengthy debate as to whether Gaiden's story even belongs within Resident Evil canon.

Since fans have such passionate feelings about Resident Evil Gaiden, it makes perfect sense for Capcom to bring it to the eShop and let players experience this long lost title. We have a feeling plenty of people missed it nearly ten years ago, and the fact that both it and Revelations feature a ship is too good a coincidence to pass up.